


Sing For Me

by darkdropout



Series: Magic of Your Touch AU [2]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkdropout/pseuds/darkdropout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic AU. Sequel to <a href="http://darkdropout.livejournal.com/14479.html">Magic of Your Touch</a>. Before Nino, Ohno could control his magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing For Me

Before Nino, Ohno could control his magic.

It'd taken time and practice. He'd had to teach himself, learn what he could do and what he couldn’t, when he could do it and how. It took a long time and even Mama couldn’t help because even Mama didn’t know the answers to his questions.

But when the people of the town began to curse him, to spit at him and chase him away, Ohno learned faster because he had to.

 

Since Ohno met Nino, things are out of control. When Nino smiles, thunder rumbles and when they touch it pours. Nino's kisses make the entire house shake.

Mama makes him nail down the furniture, but she always let's Nino stay for dinner.

“I know he’s special to you,” she says, sweeping up the unsalvageable shards of the third broken pitcher this week, “but you’ll bring this whole house to ruin. And if you make it rain much more, they'll chase you right out of this town.”

Ohno tells Nino what Mama said.

“I don’t care,” Nino replies with a frown.

Ohno leans in to kiss the frown away and tries to ignore the sounds of shattering porcelain in the kitchen below.

 

Then one day Ohno’s skin glows so hot and bright it burns Nino’s hand.

Mama helps them bandage it, gives Ohno a knowing look over the roll of gauze.

“It's fine," Nino tells them, but hisses in pain when Mama presses down.

 

Ohno tells Nino that they should stop. He doesn’t want to, and just to say the words take all the courage he’s got. But Mama always says he has to be brave, brave for the one’s he loves, and he loves Nino enough to do almost anything. He’ll do this because he doesn’t want to hurt Nino again.

“No,” is Nino’s answer. He’s shuffling cards, the usual quick, practiced movements of his fingers clumsy around white bandages. When he drops half the deck to the floor, he lets out a frustrated sigh.

Ohno reaches down to pick up the fallen cards, but Nino bats at him with his good hand.

“No,” he says again, fiercer this time.

Ohno’s skin turns gold where Nino’s fingers brush against him, where they linger. Nino smiles, but the smile doesn’t meet his eyes.

"Sing for me?" he asks.

Ohno can’t say no, never says no, so he follows Nino to the window, throwing it wide. The sky reflects itself in Nino’s eyes, and the moon shines along Nino’s skin, and Ohno forgets to breath until Nino nudges him expectantly.

Ohno opens his mouth and let’s his voice warm the night air, the stars above them rearranging with every note.

 

They fall asleep, curled so close the air around them fills with sparks that sizzle out before they hit the ground.

Ohno dreams of a house built of cards, walls of spades and aces and doors of diamonds and hearts. It shakes and shakes, but never falls down.

 

In the morning, Nino is gone.

 

After Nino leaves, everything is worse.

Wherever Ohno walks, the grass curls yellow and brown beneath his feet. In the middle of the summer the leaves turn black, burnt, falling off the trees around him, crumbling to dust before they even reach the ground. His skin turns pale, pale and his eyes dark, dark and his smile is forgotten in the worried line of his lips.

He locks himself away. He lies in a bed that feels empty without Nino, grows emptier and emptier each day without Nino, the emptiness stretching the bedposts wider and wider, the sheets longer and longer until the bed fills the entire room. It presses against bowing walls. It blocks the door.

Ohno doesn’t notice, just stares at the ceiling as it cracks in abstract constellations above his head, cracks along the same lines as his heart cracks in his chest.

 

A month passes.

 

“Satoshi,” Mama says. “Please.”

It’s only for Mama that he opens the door.

 

Mama holds him in her arms, strokes his hair while he cries candy-colored tears that burn his skin and her skin and everything they touch, hissing into smoke and steam against the fabric of their clothes. Mama holds him and promises him that even though it feels like the end of the world, it isn’t.

For the first time in his life, Ohno thinks Mama is wrong.

 

Another month passes just the same.

 

Mama sends Ohno to the store, pushes him out the door and closes it behind him before he can refuse. It’s the first time he’s left the house in so long that the outside world looks strange to him, as if he’s remembered it all wrong.

The sun is yellow hot and the sky is clear blue and Ohno wonders how everything can look so picture perfect now. Don’t the sun and sky, the trees and grass and clouds, know that Nino is gone?

He’s so absorbed in these thoughts that he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t see them until they've surrounded him.

“Freak!” they shout. “Devil!”

When they push him to the ground, he doesn’t struggle. When the kicks and punches start, he doesn’t make a sound. He doesn't even try to shield his face. There’s no reason to fight to stay in this world he thinks, has been thinking it for a long time now anyway, as his own blood stains the dirt a muddy brown.

“Hey!”

A voice cuts through the air sharp and bright. For a moment the kicking stops, but on the edge of consciousness Ohno barely notices, barely cares.

“I’m magic too,” says the voice, fiercely, and Ohno feels a static shock from head to toe.

The crowd parts a little, just enough. And there is Nino.

Ohno must be dying now, he’s sure of it. Mama always said he’d go to heaven and Ohno thinks this must be it because Nino is standing right in front of him, looking right at him. Nino catches Ohno’s gaze and there’s a desperate look there, in Nino’s eyes. Something sparks alive in Ohno’s chest, something he hasn’t felt in so long, something so strong it feels like his entire body will break apart.

Nino’s got his deck of cards and he lets them fall through the air from one hand to the other in a long graceful curve.

“I’m magic too,” he says again to the crowd. “Why don’t you hit me instead?”

Ohno closes his eyes.

The cards burst into flames. They fill the air with fire, twos and threes, and Jacks and Queens, swirl out in a dizzying spiral through the crowd. The people shriek and scatter. They run for their lives.

But Ohno sees none of this. He keeps his eyes shut tight against the sound of pounding footsteps and frantic shouts. He keeps them shut even as the noise around him fades away and disappears. He keeps them shut until he feels hands on his face, in his hair. When he finally opens them, Nino is there, cradling Ohno in his arms.

Nino is crying, but he’s laughing too and Ohno wonders how he can do both, how anyone can do both. But then, Nino has always been magic.

“How did you –“ Ohno starts, thinking of all the people and wondering where they’ve gone.

“I didn’t,” Nino tells him, breathless and so close. “You did.”

 

Ohno asks Mama for his allowance early and buys Nino a brand new pack of cards. Nino can’t stop grinning when Ohno gives them to him and it makes Ohno feel shy and invincible all at once. The cards are red-backed with white edges and bright across Ohno’s bed sheets when Nino drops them there, when Nino pushes Ohno back onto the bed and kisses him.

Their lips touch and Ohno waits for a storm. But nothing happens.

Instead Nino kisses him and kisses him and nothing happens at all.

 

Ohno can control it now.

But sometimes, Nino still asks him to make it rain.


End file.
